Lady Cassandra Part 31

"Your man is chasing the doctor. You'll find him waiting at home. What a comfort that he was with you!"

"He saved her life," Teresa said. "Not one man in a thousand would have done as he did. He was so brave."

"I know someone braver!" said Grizel in her heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

JUDGMENT OF YOUTH.

For the rest of the afternoon the house was still as the grave, each member of the little party preserving a rigorous silence for the sake of those others who were presumably asleep, but with the exception of Ca.s.sandra sleep was conspicuous by its absence. The Squire retired to a distant corner of the garden, and practised putting by himself, reflecting ruefully on his interrupted game. Martin sat by Grizel's couch, mentally abusing himself for the morning's desertion. Grizel had asked him to join the picnic, and he had preferred to go off on his own devices. Probably if he had been present, the accident would have happened just the same, but he would have been beside her to help and support. Excuse himself as he might, the fact remained that Grizel had gone through an appalling experience alone. The thought filled him with a pa.s.sion of tenderness and remorse, and even in the depths of her mental and physical exhaustion, Grizel luxuriated in the consciousness, and lured him on with tender wiles. It was all the rest she wanted, just to lie still, holding Martin's hand, to feel his touch on her forehead. The unconsciousness of sleep would have been poor in comparison, for her heart needed healing more than her body. A few hours, a few days at most, and even Ca.s.sandra herself would have surmounted the physical strain of the morning, but what of the hidden danger from which the veil had been torn aside? Now that it had been revealed--what was to happen to those three young lives?

Grizel had given her husband a detailed account of the accident, but she had refrained from telling him of Dane's mad words. Whether or not she would ever tell him, would depend on future events. He had a right to know everything that concerned herself, but she would have felt it to be a disloyalty to her friends to have betrayed the new complication which had come into their lives. It was for them to work out their own salvation; for her, as the onlooker, to be silent, and wait.

As for Martin, he was too much absorbed in his wife to display undue curiosity, and his eyes had discovered nothing mysterious in the condition of either Teresa or Dane himself.

"The fellow is played out. He must have been half crazed to do what he did. No man would have the strength in a normal condition. In the great moments of life we draw drafts on our reserve forces, and no effort seems too great. But we have to pay up. Peignton condensed the energy of months into three or four minutes, and for the moment he is bankrupt. It must have been a blood-curdling sight for you, my darling,--and that poor girl, Teresa! She seemed the calmest of the party, by the way."

"Calmness is comparative--everything is comparative. It's impossible to know how much people feel... Oh, Beloved, there are so many sorts, and if they don't feel _our_ way, it may be just as bad to them! Martin!

we've been married six months, we know each other six hundred times better than when we began, and there's this virtue about me--I don't pretend! You know the worst of me, as well as the best. Honestly--on your solemnest oath,--have you _ever_ been sorry?"

Martin did not reply. He smiled a smile of ineffable content. Grizel tilted her head on the cus.h.i.+on, and smiled back. "I _knew_ you haven't.

That's why I asked. If there had been the faintest doubt, I couldn't have faced it to-day. But there are so many months--life is so long.

Martin! you might change!"

Martin's face sobered. His thoughts flew back to the girl wife who, for a few short months, had shared his life; at whose death life itself had seemed to end. He had been but twenty-five at the time, and he had suffered with all the fierce intensity of youth. If Juliet had made a similar suggestion in those far-off days, he would have refuted it with scorn, yet he _had_ changed; the young image had faded, and a living woman now filled his heart. Was it the remembrance of Juliet, which made Grizel doubt?

"So long as you live, Grizel, it isn't possible that I could change. A man who had once loved you could never be satisfied with an ordinary woman. And I am a man now, not a boy. Even--even if I were alone again--"

She leant forward in a quick caress.

"You are not going to be alone! I am not going to leave you, Honey! If I were, I should not ask for promises. It's because I intend to live on to eighty or ninety, that I'm anxious. I couldn't bear it if you grew cool and cold. I wouldn't _try_ to bear it! Prosaic matrimony would drive me to the devil. I can't tell you what sort of devil,--there might be several, but a devil it would certainly be. But if you'll love me, dear, I'll grow nearer the angels!"

He laid his head beside hers on the cus.h.i.+on, and they sat silently, through blessed moments of communion. In heart and love they were at one, but their thoughts carried them on different voyages. When he spoke again, it was to say in tones of kindly toleration:

"Don't be too hard on the poor Squire. He's a good fellow, and, as you say, there are all sorts. Presumably she loved that sort. She chose him, you know."

"Unfortunately she didn't. She chose a waking man, who fell asleep the moment he'd got her, and has slept on steadily ever since. He was in love, you see, and love galvanised him into a show of life, and poor, dear Ca.s.sandra saw the miracle, and believed it was going to last.

You're a man, my dear, and you're an author, and you write very clever books, but you don't realise for a moment how intoxicating it is for a woman to hold the reins in her own hands, while a lord of creation kneels trembling at her feet! It's the one little time of her life when she is master, and it goes to her head. He tells her that she is the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars, and that his only object in life is to adore her for evermore, and that if she won't have him he'll pine away and die on Wednesday week, and the poor dear thing believes every word, and is so touched to find herself of such importance after being just an ordinary, superfluous girl, that she will promise anything he likes to ask. I am talking, of course," said Grizel markedly, "of _country_ girls! Girls like Ca.s.sandra, shut up in moated granges a dozen miles from the nearest anywhere. _Not_ of myself! It was _no_ novelty to me to have men squirming!"

"What a very undignified word! Don't dare to apply it to me. I'll kneel, as much as you like, but I refuse to squirm!" Martin stretched himself, and rose to his feet. Grizel was better, beginning to talk in her natural vein, and his conscience began to p.r.i.c.k him about his guest.

"Do you think you could manage to get a little deep now! I really ought to look after poor old Raynor."

Grizel accorded a gracious permission, and submitted meekly to an irritating process which Martin called "making her comfortable." When the door was closed behind him, she deftly rearranged all the accessories which he had misplaced, and composed herself for the long-deferred rest, but it was not to be. In less than five minutes a knock sounded at the door, and after a moment's pause was repeated in a more insistent fas.h.i.+on.

"Come in!" cried Grizel clearly, and Teresa's head peeped enquiringly round the corner of the door.

"You are alone?" she asked. "I hoped you would be. I couldn't rest, and I knew you couldn't either. Do you mind if I sit down and talk a few minutes?"

"Do, dear; I'd like it," Grizel said kindly, her eyes fixed on the girl's figure, with an astonished admiration. Teresa had taken off her dress, and put on a plainly made blue cashmere dressing-gown, the loose folds of which disguised the somewhat ungainly lines of her figure, and gave to it an effect of dignity and height. Her hair had been unloosed and hung in two heavy plaits to her waist, giving a Gretchen-like expression to the fair, blue-eyed face. Teresa had prepared herself for her siesta with characteristic thoroughness, but apparently without avail. She seated herself beside Grizel's couch, folded her hands on her knee, and asked a level question:

"I wanted to know. Have you told your husband everything that happened?"

"Everything about the accident itself. Nothing more, Teresa."

For a moment the blue eyes lightened with grat.i.tude.

"I _thought_ you wouldn't. But most women would. Thank you. I'd rather no one was told."

"No one shall hear anything from me. It is not my business. I shall forget it, Teresa!"

The girl shook her head.

"You can't do that. I don't think I want you to forget. It's a help to have someone who understands. Mrs Beverley--do you think he _meant_ it?"

Grizel sat upright on the sofa, her small hands locked on her knee, and for a long silent minute blue eyes and hazel met in a steady gaze.

There were no secrets between the two women at the end of that minute.

"Yes, Teresa," said Grizel unsteadily. "I think he did."

"You know he did," corrected Teresa gravely. She was silent for another moment, sitting motionless with downcast eyes, then deliberately raised them again and continued:

"At the time he did mean it... She is so beautiful, and fascinating.

Everyone admires her. And it was terrible to watch her choking before one's eyes. It wrung one's heart. What he said at the time should not be counted. He was not sane. I am thinking of the time before.--Do you,--do you think he meant it _before_?"

Grizel did not speak. To her impetuous ardent nature, the girl's composure seemed terrible and unnatural. It affected her more strongly than the most violent hysteria. She sat crunched up into the corner of the sofa, looking white and scared, and helpless, flinching before the steady scrutiny of the blue eyes.

"_Please tell me_."

"Teresa, I--wondered! It troubled me. Lately I felt sure. I was sorry it had been arranged to come here together. I tried to alter it; you know I tried... Did _you_ never suspect?"

Teresa hesitated. The colour had faded from her cheek, but she was still calm and collected.

"Not--_that_! I knew he admired her--that was of course. I knew he liked to be with her whenever he could. Once or twice I felt--lonely!

But she was married.--I never dreamt of this. I have read of men falling in love with married women, but I have never known it in real life. I did not think he was that sort." Scorn spoke in her voice, a youthful intolerance and contempt. It was not only on her own account that she was suffering. Peignton had been to her the ideal man, and the ideal had fallen. The whole structure of life seemed shaken under her feet.

Grizel looked at her, with a saddened glance.

"Poor, dear, little girl! It's hard for you, but you must try to understand. You've lived in a very sheltered little corner, dear, where the difficult things of life have been hidden away out of sight. It's hard for you to be quite fair, and see the other point of view as well as your own. But you must try. You mustn't condemn poor Dane. He was engaged to you, and he has fallen in love with another woman. It sounds bad enough on the face of it, but you and I who know him, and have watched him these last months, know that there has been nothing deliberate about it, nothing guilty or underhand. He was engaged to you and he was faithful to you--in intent. He wanted to be faithful. The other thing was just a great trial wave which overtook him and swept him off his feet."

Teresa set her lips, her face hard and cold.

"It could not have swept him, if he had been firm! If he had been faithful to me, he could not have noticed any other woman in that way.

I never noticed another man. I don't understand it."

Grizel sighed. The youthful arrogance of the girl was at once pitiful and menacing. To her there existed but the two hard lines, a right and a wrong, the maze of intersecting paths had no existence in her eyes.

Her judgment, like that of all young untried things, was relentlessly hard.